Once an Eagle (125 page)

She had started to remonstrate, a reflex action, then to her surprise had nodded. It was true. She'd fought her father, the oppressive force of his intellect, his incredible equanimity—but it was true. He could quicken your appetite for things. And now that she finally appreciated it and could value it, he was gone …

“He was remarkable, wasn't he?” she heard herself murmur. “It was funny, what he had. He was—”

“He had character,” Sam said simply.

“Yes—I guess he did, didn't he? I never thought of him like that.”

“That's what he had, though. He was always aware of consequences: he never forgot about them and he never deceived himself about them. That's very rare.”

“I suppose so.” She was reminded for no reason she could see of evenings in that bedraggled old set at Benning with Marge and Ben. “Remember the night Butch Batchelder came by and made that pass at Marge? and Ben wanted to fight him and you had to tackle him out on the back line and sit on him?” Silently he nodded; neon lights from a passing roadhouse glowed red on his face and then faded. “It seems funny thinking about that now. All that fuss …”

He would never talk about Palamangao: not one word. She had respected that, but later when they were down at Benning she had wormed it out of Frenchy Beaupré one evening when he was visiting them and Sam was held late at the headquarters building. Frenchy assumed she knew, and by pretending to ask for certain details she got the whole story. She could feel her face change as he told her; she'd suspected it was true—and yet something inside her had refused to accept the fact. But here it was, in all its vicious, murderous force. It had happened; it was true.

“It's hideous,” she exclaimed. For the first time in her life—and this was strange, after so many years in the company of soldiers—she felt something of the terrible mental anguish in war. Before this she had thought of it only as physical agony, death and wounds and lesser privations; now she saw what exquisite torment a moment like this, with a man like Court, must mean. Damn him, she thought, and ground her teeth; damn him straight down to hell. “It's worse than hideous. It's outside the human race …”

“Yes, I'll sign that,” Frenchy said.

She looked at him. “But how about you?—didn't you want to—I don't know: expose the whole thing, blow it all apart?”

“You're damned well right I did, Tommy. I argued with Sam about it, but his mind was made up. You know how that is.”

“Indeed I do.”

“God Himself couldn't change it. That was the way he wanted it, and that was the way it went. That's how the Double Five got the Distinguished Unit Citation. Sam made a deal with our friend—he wouldn't say anything if Massengale wangled the citation.”

“—But they were dead!” she burst out. “All his friends … ”

“No kidding,” he came back hotly. “You think for one minute he didn't know that? There were plenty of sad sons of bitches coming right along behind them. The dear old dirty old war had to go on, didn't it? Don't be so God damned stupidly sanctimonious …”

She pressed her hand against her knee. “I'm not,” she said softly. “I'm sorry, Frenchy; I don't mean to be.” She paused. “That's why he won't wear the ribbon.”

He stared irately up at the ceiling. “You're catching on.”

She had never brought it up again with Sam. She could only guess at the violence of the struggle that had gone on in his heart, the burning mortification he must have felt at striking that bargain. It was odd—he'd been right about Court all along. For all his cranky, unpopular attitudes he'd been right about a lot of things. She remembered one night at the club at Ord, during the furor over the activation of the Negro divisions, and Maury Odom saying:

“Sam, you know as well as I do that I haven't got prejudice-one about this. But the sad fact of the matter is the Negro just can't think fast enough to fight well.”

Sam had smiled. “Henry Armstrong and Sugar Ray Robinson seem to do pretty well.”

“Oh, sure—prize fighting. I'm talking about aptitudes, reacting to the unexpected. You never worked with them, Sam. Talk to Jeff Barker—he's had them to here. Barracks a mess, automatic weapons frozen up, and vehicles—Jesus!”

“Maybe they feel it doesn't matter whether they take care of their gear or not.”

“What do you mean? They're in the Army, aren't they? They're supposed to take care of their equipment like anybody else.”

Sam had shifted in his seat. “I mean maybe if the Negro were treated like an equal—really like an equal—his attitude would change.”

“Oh, come on, Sam,” Jim Ravenel broke in with his soft drawl. “The nigger can't be treated like an equal for the simple reason that he
isn't
one. He never was and never will be. His skull is different, his brain is smaller, he's from an inferior race. I don't know whether that's good, bad or indifferent, but it happens to be a fact.”

“I rather doubt that,” Sam had said, and she could see his face settling in that stubborn look. “I rather doubt that a good deal.”

“Sam, the trouble with you is, you're a dreamer,” Maury said. “Seriously now, would you take orders from a colored officer?”

Sam looked at him in surprise. “Of course I would. And so would you, and so would Jim.”

“Never!” Ravenel said, and his eyes were slits in his drawn, handsome face. “Never! I'd resign from the service before I'd do that …”

“Why?” Sam pursued. “Let's face it—we've all served under some complete and utter sons of bitches: incompetents and idiots and sadists and God knows what else. But they've given orders and we obeyed them. What's the difference? You're a good soldier—”

“This has nothing whatsoever to do with soldiering,” Ravenel said in a frosty tone. “This is something else entirely. If you can't understand it I can't explain it to you.”

Their corner of the room had turned silent and uncomfortable. She had signaled Sam furiously with her eyes, but he had said, without a trace of heat: “It's got to come, gentlemen; no matter what any of us thinks. Sooner or later it's got to come—if only so we're a bit closer to being that great democracy we're pleased to call ourselves. And the Army is just the place to begin.”

“Why, in God's name?” Maury demanded crossly.

“Because we all do things we don't like, for the good of the service. All the time. Because we're trained to respect principle above person, rank over failings. And if an AGO comes down from Washington saying, ‘
You will,
regardless of your own personal feelings in the matter,' we will. And maybe we'll all be the better for it.”

“Well, I'm here to tell you I hope and pray to Almighty God that day never comes,” Jim Ravenel retorted, and drained his glass.

But the day had come, she thought, gazing up at the fog sifting grayly above the tops of the pines. The order
had
come down from the Adjutant General's Office, and Negro and white bunked together, and white men served under Negro officers; and the Jim Ravenels could resign from the service or make the best of it. Enlisted men could serve on courts-martial, as Sam had argued that they should, so long ago at Hardee; and a legally trained law officer presided over all general courts. Maybe the dreamers and the fools were right, over the long haul—more than the shrewd, practical ones. Maybe the troublemakers—

Inside, the phone was ringing, insistent and clear. She snapped back to the soft sunlight, Gertrude Woodruff's flat Ohio voice. With a groan she started to get to her feet, saw Sam in a dirty T-shirt moving through the kitchen. He called, “I'll take it,” and she waved and nodded.

“I've got to be on my horse,” Gertrude declared. “Come on, Jean.”

“Why?” Tommy demanded. “What've you got that's so special?”

“Not a blessed thing. That's the trouble. Laundry and letters. The garden. A silly old woman's pastimes.—I'm getting fat,” she said, and pushed at her midriff, which swelled against her blouse. “Look at that. Look at that. I've got to do something about it.”

“Why don't you take up these Yoga drills?”

“Sit there holding my breath with my toes curled up under my armpits? No thanks.”

“They're easy,” Tommy protested, “—they're fun, in fact. I can show you in twenty minutes, Gert.”

“No—I'll go along my weak and weary way: Canadian Club and a hot bath.” She and Jean rose and moved toward the door that led through the living room, Tommy following them. “It's on for Friday, then?”

“Sure thing.”

“Swell. Lord, it'll be good to get up to some decent shops, bright lights and things. This bucolic splendor goes a long way with little Gertie. We'll pick you up around eight?”

“Fine.”

Tommy watched them walk off along the redwood sections. Sam had set them in too far apart for a woman's stride, and the effort to step in the center of each section threw them both into an extravagant, lurching gait.

“Beautiful!” Jean called, and pointed down. “You're going to have a showplace …”

“If we don't drop dead from exhaustion first.”

In the kitchen Tommy paused, listening to the clatter of their departure. The Woodruffs had a British Ford, and it sounded exactly like an overloud sewing machine. She couldn't hear Sam's voice, so presumably the phone call was ended. Yet he hadn't gone out again. It was so quiet: why was that? She walked into the bedroom. Sam was sitting by the bed table, his thumb at his chin.

“Who was it, dear?”

He turned and looked at her. She could see where he'd scribbled two pages of notes on the telephone scratch pad. “It was Skip Burleson,” he said. “The Chief's office. They want me to go to Khotiane.”

“Khotiane!” she exclaimed. “What on earth for?”

He got to his feet. He was covered with adobe dust, and there was a smear of dirt low across his forehead. “There's a lot going on over there. More than meets the eye. It seems. It would be a special mission.” His face was solemn and preoccupied, but there was that curious fugitive gleam in his eyes.
China,
she thought with a quick pang of jealousy, of outrage; oh my God, it's China all over again.

“The Chief wants me to head it,” he went on.

She stared at him. “Now? Right away?”

“Well, yes. As soon as possible.”

“You mean they're going to call you back into service?”

“That's what I gather.”

“But why you? You're retired …” She made a brief sound of distress. “Besides, you've done enough—you've already done more than any baker's dozen of them together. Forty-three years—”

“I know.”

He'd made up his mind, then: he'd decided to go. There was no sense in saying anything more. She folded her arms. “You're going, then?”

He frowned and looked at his dirty nails. “The Chief must have a reason. A particular one.”

She sighed inaudibly and turned away. They had been pursued by war. VJ Day, the smoky, sunlit September afternoon on the Green at Walt Whitman and their most fervent hopes had meant nothing at all. Instead of the years of peace she had dreamed of, that rational, open-hearted community of peoples she'd felt must come, war had kept breaking out: in Indonesia, in Greece, in Palestine and Indo-China. There had very nearly been war over Berlin. Sam hadn't gone to Korea—Bradley had wanted him to take over the Infantry School at Benning. He had followed events closely, agonizing over the Pusan Perimeter where Joey Krisler had a company, rejoicing at the Inchon landings. But he had not requested a transfer: he would serve where he was sent. He would not change. He could not conceal his apprehension when MacArthur went north to the Yalu. “It won't work,” he'd said grimly. “I don't care what he or Willoughby or any of the rest of his G-2 wizards say, it won't work. The Chinese are going to come in, and it's going to go very hard with us.” During the truce negotiations he had been quietly jubilant. “Why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Total victory—that idea's as dead as the dodo bird. It was an impossible concept anyway. Look—we have checked armed aggression: let it rest there.” Meanwhile war kept on breaking out—in Pakistan, Suez, Hungary, Cuba, Algeria, Laos, Khotiane. Sam had got his third star and been transferred back to Beyliss …

He was looking up flight schedules to San Francisco and writing down lists of things to do, talking to himself in an undertone: he had to shoot off a wire to Joey, he would have to take a physical at the Presidio, he ought to see Slattery and Spike Robinson who were just back from there and get all the dope he could, he wondered if Gene Villarette was available—

She said: “But Court Massengale's out there, isn't he?”

He nodded. “He's COMMACK.”

“Bliss Farnham's out there, too. Fowler, Graulet, the whole gang. What makes you think you can make any headway against that crew?”

He frowned at her, but not in irritation. “Well, they're with the Military Advisory Corps. This would be different. It's a political mission.”

“But you said everything's essentially political out there, anyway. Look at Laos. Where does one leave off and the other begin? Everything's political—and then it's military, and then it's political again.” Her voice had risen a note and she depressed it. “It sounds to me as though you're just walking into a hornet's nest. And for what? What'll it accomplish? You'll just go out there and wear yourself out and in six months they'll be blowing each other up all over again …”

He sat down on the bed and passed his hand slowly over his face. “Somebody's got to do it.”

“All right, but why you? Let someone else do it. Somebody”—she started to say “younger” and switched in midsentence—“who hasn't always been on Court Massengale's spit-list … Why in God's name did they pick
you?
” she cried. “Can't they see it's hopeless? He'll trick you and trap you every step of the way …”